At Adwise, we like to shine the spotlight on the talent in our ecosystem. Meeting with Edouard Le Maréchalthe author of Innovation in the age of the butterfly - who wonders "How to achieve lasting success in a chaotic world".
Adwise : In your opinion, traditional innovation techniques no longer work because they are no longer adapted to a world that has become chaotic: in what way has our world become chaotic?
Edouard Le Maréchal : It is a combination of phenomena: technological upheavals (digitisation of information), political and economic upheavals (globalisation and deregulation), demographic upheavals (exponential growth on a human scale) and even environmental upheavals (pressure on resources, climate change).
Everything has accelerated and become 'ephemeralised', to the point where our relationship with time has been thrown out of kilter - our relationships and exchanges, our desires and objectives, the problems we encounter and the solutions we offer. In a remarkable perverse effect, this acceleration causes collateral effects that fuel the dynamic of chaos. What was thought to be a 50-year revolution is becoming a 5-year reversal. All areas of human activity, all levels of Maslow's pyramid, are affected!
Adwise : And more specifically, what does this chaos mean for economic activity?
Edouard Le Maréchal : We are suffering from the unpredictability of our markets and the loss of reference points on the part of our customers, who sometimes become our suppliers or even our competitors. There are no longer any watertight boundaries between markets and segments, because perceptions and practices no longer do.
The first stage in the chaos was the intensification of competition, with the globalisation and disintermediation of distribution. "barbariansThese are young companies with no faith (in the big institutions) or law (of the market) that have shattered all the benchmarks patiently constructed by brands for consumers. Now, I think we can expect to see the supply-demand polarity and the sacrosanct monetary value as the sole currency of exchange disappear, in favour of other models that cannot be financialised in the traditional sense.
Adwise : The flapping of the wings of the Australian butterfly that triggers a storm in Europe symbolises the theory of chaos; but in a few words, what is the Butterfly Process when it comes to innovation?
Edouard Le Maréchal : Le Butterfly Process aims to enable innovators to get out of the rut in which the injunctions of the present keep them. They have to be prepared to give up everything they know or believe about their market, on the assumption that everything can be turned upside down: the dominant technology, the market balance, the way demand is structured, and so on. The innovator believes that if his idea is good, it will be convincing, and vice versa. But true innovation doesn't just reinvent supply, it also reinvents demand.
Le Butterfly Process enables it to fluidify its complex thinking by changing its vision: from a particle vision to a wave vision. Innovation is characterised by exchanges and relationships between stakeholders, rather than by the value proposition.
Adwise : You mention 3 main stages ...
Edouard Le Maréchal : These steps make it possible to "triangulate the process, delaying the moment when the value proposition is precisely defined. Visit Butterfly Process is to leave as many possibilities open as possible until the complex innovation emerges.
The first stage, Awarenessis to revisit the context with a dynamic vision: what economic balances are we in the process of calling into question? What new forward-looking dynamics will innovation have to contend with? It's like putting on infrared goggles to observe a context that we've previously photographed in order to understand its movements.
The second stage is called Ambition. The idea is to construct different scenarios for the success of the innovation, without presuming what it will be made up of. The key is to define a new balance for the ecosystem and deduce the nature and volume of the input and output. Choosing the scenario that seems most in line with your ambitions enables you to learn lessons about the nature of the innovation, the business model it builds, the deployment method it will follow and the beliefs it must reinvent.
The third stage is called Alignment. The aim is to define which stakeholders can be brought on board and how to ensure that their contributions are aligned with the project. The work of aligning the project's aims with the aims and contributions of each stakeholder will also generate decisive lessons for innovation.
Once these three stages have been completed, the innovation is defined. There is no creative Eureka moment as such, but rather the conviction that there is nothing more to add, that the innovation is complete.
Adwise : On your site Age of the butterflyYou're interested in the new unicorns, like Airbnb or BlaBlaCar: the embodiment of tomorrow's chaotic, innovative company?
Edouard Le Maréchal : I'm not sure. I think they are rather weak signals. Unicorns are the embodiment of the agile company (in economic and organisational terms) and dissident (by playing with regulations or bypassing institutional players). This model, if it is not based on a vision that is desirable to the ecosystem in which it operates (i.e. what we traditionally call customers, suppliers, prescribers, legislators, etc.) does not seem to me to be sustainable.
Most of them have built their success on their immateriality and their image. And as Uber has shown, what could be easier to destroy than a reputation? That said, I think that in the long term, with the (relative) bankruptcy of politics, schools, religion and the family, the corporate institution will take back these powers to offer society, through its employees, its customers and its ecosystem, the means to climb (or not) Maslow's pyramid.
